SAN MIGUEL Corporation (SMC) — parent company behind the Gin Kings, the Hotshots, and the Beermen — remains committed to its Pasig River Expressway project, or PAREX, even as the elevated highway project faces opposition from advocates.
SMC is even onboarding an architectural firm that, just a few months before, had denied any formal involvement in the project.
In a statement last week, the conglomerate confirmed that Palafox Associates had signed on to help with the project, which will be built along the capital's vital waterway.
“For many decades we have been emphasizing green architecture and green urbanism in our projects in the Philippines and abroad,” said Jun Palafox Jr. in the statement.
“For the PAREX project, our approach will be the same, we are designing not just infrastructure, but an urban landscape. We are promoting sustainability through architecture, with a holistic vision.”
The firm will ensure that green modes of transportation, including pedestrian pathways, bicycle highways, public transport, and a landscaped planting strip, will be “integrated seamlessly into the PAREX.”
Palafox, whose projects include La Mesa Eco Park as well as a redevelopment master plan for Clark Freeport Zone, added: “We believe that if done right and in line with sustainability and green architecture principles, Parex will be a model road infrastructure that further democratizes the benefits and convenience of infrastructure.”
Last September 26, Palafox wrote in a Facebook post that SMC and its president and CEO Ramon S. Ang reached out to his firm, but they had not signed any contract.
At the time, Ang asserted in a statement that forces “critical of PAREX” had been exerting pressure on Palafox to “drop the project.”
In SMC’s statement from March 25, Ang said, “In all our major infrastructure projects, we always take into consideration the effects on the environment, putting greater emphasis on how we can build the infrastructure while at the same time preserve or enhance the environment.”
Environmental, mobility groups continue to oppose PAREX
An alliance of mobility, environmental, religious, and heritage groups (united under the Move As One Coalition) have continued their opposition to PAREX.
At the public online hearing on the project held on March 25 hosted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB), Move As One Coalition convenor Robert Siy said, “The Pasig River itself is a national treasure, deserving of respect and protection."
Various speakers at the hearing once again raised the possibility of negative environmental impact on the river. They also questioned the benefit to communities that the 19-kilometer expressway will pass through.
“From what we read in the EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment], there's many inconsistencies and not much data to prove that this is something that will benefit Filipinos and Ilog Pasig,” said Bea Dolores of heritage advocacy organization Renacimiento MNL.
Earlier this month, the Move As One Coalition had sent an 18-page letter of complaint to the DENR-EMB, asking to postpone the March 25 hearing. It alleged that both the PAREX scoping meeting from last year “was not carried out correctly”.
The letter also said that the EIA itself contains several deficiencies, including a lack of discussion on how construction would affect historical sites, and how an elevated expressway would affect “organisms and plants that thrive in the waterway.”
In the hearing, Palafox said that his firm had only been involved in the project for the past 92 days.
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